JAMES HOSKING

I am a Chicago-based visual artist working in photo, film, and collage. I’m a former MacDowell Fellow in visual arts, artist in residence at Latitude, and Art Director of the Chicago Reader. My work has screened internationally and appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Economist, The Atlantic, WIRED, The Baffler, and many other publications. My work was recently included in the White Columns Curated Artist Registry.

I developed a multimedia project examining identity, aging, and labor among veteran drag performers in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood entitled Beautiful By Night. It included a documentary that I directed, produced, and edited. The project was featured in exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) and the Tenderloin Museum, as well as in a solo exhibition at the University of Michigan.

I was a HATCH resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC) where I presented a series of collages entitled The Personals with support from an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The pieces in The Personals are made from LGBTQ+ archival material and inspired by the text of found personals. In the Chicago Reader, critic Annette LePique wrote: “Hosking’s work is an act of mediumship; it is a way for the past and present to meet and for the desires and lived experiences of those often denied the light to feel the glow of day once more.”

I’m the recipient of an Individual Artists Program grant from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to support The Personals. Pieces from the series have been featured in group shows at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Gerber/Hart Library & Archives, the Chicago Cultural Center, Filter Photo, and other venues, as well as in a solo exhibition at the Evanston Public Library, co-presented with Hive Center for the Book Arts. The series was featured on the cover and in a portfolio in the East Window Journal of Written & Visual Arts. I created a group of new works from The Personals for the Pardon Collection, publishers of Collé, which are included in the exhibition Commissioned at the Cannery Village Gallery. I will work on the series during an upcoming residency at Ragdale. I was chosen for the sixth iteration of Voices Embodied, an annual exhibition that considers disability in relation to identities. Using my archival research into this subject area, I will create a site-specific installation at The Design Museum of Chicago, on view in summer 2026.